heavy are you, my boy, with demons in your sleeves
by belleways
Summary: "She whispers and cries in harmonies for her saltwater king."


It began all at once, you think, because– one day it wasn't, and then one day it was (you're surprised and vexed that you can't remember the exact moment it changed, because it is perhaps the most important moment in your life, and you're foolish, foolish, foolish for forgetting it), one day it was "priest" and then one day it was "Athelstan", one day he was nothing and then one day he was everything.

It began all at once. It began lifetimes ago. It began and it never, never ended.

"You do not have to be like your mother, you know," he tells you one day, voice as gentle and soothing as summer wind; cooling the heat pulsing beneath your cheeks, the tears building a steady pressure behind your eyes. "There is no shame in that."

There's been a row; earlier this morning your mother pulls you aside after you've finished catching fish, informs you that soon you will be required to seek a husband, and soon your training as a shieldmaiden must begin. You don't want to marry yet, you plead with her. You don't want to be a warrior, you beg her. She makes no secret of her disappointment, and you fear she will exert her power as a mother and force you to become what she wants, regardless of your own desires. You wept, and wept passionately. You ran down the beach, heedless of your unfinished chores, hid in one of your favorite haunts as a child, a small cove tucked behind a wall of rock; picked at the moss, wiggled the sand between your toes, imagined being a girl again, and then wept some more. And in this humor did Athelstan find you, and now here you are.

"My mother is a famous shieldmaiden, and it is expected of her daughter to become one too. I will shame her if I do not," you reply, coldly; he does not understand, he has never understood (and yet you know, in your heart, that he understands you more than anyone, and it maddens you, torments you, pierces through your gut like the fearful claws of Fenrir, because it is wrong, it is impossible, it is not the way of your people to condone a love between a mistress and her slave).

"Gyda," he persists, ignoring your rebuff, cornering you with that gaze of his (that gaze that holds a thousands seas and can drown you before you've even the chance to look away). "You are the sweetest, most gentle girl I know, and you would suffer greatly to have to fight and kill in the tradition of your family."

You stiffen, lift your chin, roll back your shoulders. "I am not a girl, ipriest/i," you correct him, irritated (and, though you won't admit it, not even to yourself, hurt) that he views you as such, that perhaps he will always view you as such.

"No," he concedes, a glimmer of something (something you can't identify, something like fear and acceptance and petulance, something like the look of coy shame Bjorn gets when he admits fault and receives mother's verbal lashings) shining through the seas of his eyes, "no, of course, you are not. Forgive me."

"I have not been a girl for some time. I am fifteen now, a woman by right, and it would do you well to remember it." But you soften, your indignation subsiding, and you stare into the ocean, feel the breeze on your cheeks, the sand beneath your frock. After a pause, you shift, curl your legs up against your chest and rest your arms on your knees and your chin on your arms. "I will have to marry soon." You say it like it is a death sentence, a spiral of anxiety and misery coiling in the pit of your stomach.

He shifts, too, you note; from the corner of your eye you see his shoulders sag (or perhaps that's just wishful thinking), sense his breath stifled in his throat. "Yes," Athelstan says, flat and impenetrable, "you will." Then, after a moment has passed, he swivels his head toward you and asks, almost shy in his curiosity, "Do you want to be married, Gyda?" Though, you know he knows the answer.

You look at him sadly and say, "Yes," for you do want to be married, it is a dream you have cherished ever since you were a child, "but for love," you add, softly, "like mother and father." You pause, lower your gaze. You can't look at him when you ask, timidly, "Have you ever been in love, Athelstan?"

"Yes," he says, and it comes much quicker than you expected, and you look at him in awe, your lips parted, your eyes wide and searching.

"But it is against your– " you start to say, prodding, yearning for more than just the simple word he gave you.

"I know what my faith tells me," he cuts you off, and suddenly you aren't breathing anymore. "But my faith and my heart have been telling me something different, for a long time now," he continues, and his hands are shaking. "Gyda, being around you– your family– has changed many things for me. I still believe in my God, I will always believe in my God, but– I have seen His presence at work in so many different ways, especially within the ways of your people, and this has changed things for me."

"I do not understand," you say, for you don't.

He's struggling to put this into words, you can see it in the slight quiver of his lip, and it's strange because you don't think you've ever seen him struggle so hard to express anything in regard to his faith. It frightens and excites you, like the rush of an oncoming storm.

"I never believed I would find love outside of God; I took the vow of chastity because my faith was greater than the lusts of my flesh and heart."

"But now?" you ask (his face reads with the beauty and timidity of a fairy story).

"Now it is different," is all he says, and your lips tug downward into a slight pout, your brow following suit in the form of a frown.

You know you won't get a confession out of him, and this saddens you, because now you know– you're sure– (mostly sure) that he speaks of you. And yet this confidence falters almost as quickly as it was established, as you think on your mother, on how legendary is her beauty, on how her golden incandescence far outshines the tiny candlelit sheen you yourself may produce. "Is it my mother?" you ask, and you hate yourself for the dread in your voice.

He chuckles mistily, with a gentle swing of his head, and then by some temerity hitherto unrevealed to you, he turns to face you and bravely lifts his eyes to yours. "I think you know it is not," is all he says, but his eyes, his lips, his cheeks say so much more; indeed they sing the song of all that he is too uneasy to speak.

"Yes," you breathe, and suddenly your heart is beating so quickly that you feel sick, "I think I do." A weight as heavy as a horse falls from your throat to your belly and you tremble with the force of it, a cold, tight knot clogging your throat.

Heat blooms in your chest and tingles through your entire body, all the way to your muddied fingertips as you reach forward, as if in a dream, and take Athelstan's face in your hands. You feel the heat pool beneath his own cheeks and it quickens your breath, so that when you seek his lips with your own you are nearly gasping for air (as if you can find it inside the sweetness of his mouth).

He tastes different than you imagined. Tangy and fleshy and dark and utterly delightful (you feel that his is the best taste that's ever set on your tongue, and if his breath was the only thing you could eat for the rest of your life you would eat it with pleasure and want for nothing more). In a moment of insecurity you wonder what you taste like (salty tears and murky, doubtful pants, hardly the airy syrupiness of a woman). But he drinks you as eagerly as you drink him, and as your heat and breaths mingle with equal fervor and desperation he lowers you to the ground and you care not that there is sand in your hair and on your neck (you care for nothing but him, him, him, his eyes, those eyes, his lips, those lips, his tongue, that tongue; all over yours, yours all over his, you can't tell which is which anymore, there is no him, there is no you, there is only the both of you melded into one, single flesh).

This, you think, is what it must feel like to be in the presence of the gods. Indeed, you sense the goddess Freyja beside you, lulling you into a gentle calm, removing your fear and trepidation (she sings a sweet song in your ear, wordless, just the strumming of her voice, as soft and lilting as any lyre).

You're nervous as you help him shrug off his shirt. You've seen him shirtless a thousand times but it's different now, it's scarier, because you can see his sweat and touch his chest and suddenly it's no longer just a fantasy, it's a reality, it's really happening, he's touching you and his lungs heave heavily over you, and his body is flush against yours, his clavicle is close enough to kiss. You catch yourself staring and summon the strength to swallow, summon the energy to breathe (how are you supposed to breathe when he is so close?), and help him unfasten the bindings of your frock. When the binding fabric is gone and you are exposed completely to his gaze, you shiver from modesty and shyly cover your breasts with your hands, your sex tucked between the overlapping of your thighs.

He, too, is unsubtle in his bashfulness. When he is just as naked as you, he hides himself under the bunched up cloth of his shirt and blushes deeply, averting his eyes from your body as if the mere sight of it will burn him. "I'm afraid," he admits, thickly. "I have never done this before. Will I– will I hurt you?"

You giggle a little and shake your head. "The goddess Freyja is watching over me. The pain will be brief," you assure him, gently, though his face still contorts with guilt. You rise, then, and slowly (gingerly; yet bravely) lower your hands to reveal your breasts, pert despite their small size (your mother assured you they'd grow with time, that you were still young, but something tells you they never will; you wonder if this disappoints him), nipples puckered by the breeze and by anticipation. Your freed hands now employ themselves with the task of taking his hands and guiding them to your breasts, and when he feels them against his palms he exhales a startled puff of air. Instincts take over, then, and you lean back down to the ground as he climbs over you, cloth now forgotten (his sex is big and getting bigger; you know that's how it's meant to work, but seeing it up close produces a queer mixture of nausea and longing).

Your knees fall apart and his body sinks between them, so that your cores are touching (you feel as if a flame has been lit within you, deep, deep, deep, and the flame inside him is only feeding the one inside you, so that a giant wild fire starts to blaze between your legs). He makes a strangled sound when he feels you against him, the muscles in his legs taut like bowstrings.

His head nestles between your breasts and you breathe sharply when his lips catch your nipple (you feel a distinct moistening at the meeting of your thighs and you wonder if that's supposed to happen, but you don't have time to wonder too long because– ioh/i).

"Dear God," he stammers, "iGyda/i."

You feel something very hard gliding over you and you're not sure what it is, or if it's supposed to be there (almost like a stave, or a broad stick, you think to yourself), but the pressure is soothing the flames bursting through your body so you don't mind.

Somehow your hands have woven their way into his hair (which smells of sea and sweat and earth) and you cling to his curls as if they're the only thing rooting him to the ground (and they are, for otherwise he might be drifting high into the clouds and far, far from here, far from the sand in your hair and far from your body beneath him, floating into the sky to join his god and forget all about you).

His breathing becomes more rapid, as does yours, and he begins rocking his hips against yours, back and forth back and forth, much like the rising tide rocking a ship, back and forth back and forth. You anchor yourself to his back now, your arms hitched at the elbow under his (you are the ship and he is the sea, he guides the tide, he is the one steering you to harbor, you have yielded completely to his ministrations).

But then he stops, all at once, panting and shaking, and pulls away from you, falling back into the sand. "I cannot– I do not know what– what to do," he manages, shame creasing his brow. "I have heard about it before, but I– I do not want to hurt you."

"Lie back," you murmur, for you know what to do (you think you do; your mother said something about it once, and you've seen her with your father a few times when they were so loud you and Bjorn could not fall asleep; when you saw them, your mother was always the one on top, so you want to be like her, you want to be strong and seductive because you think that may be what he wants). You see now that the hard thing you'd felt earlier was in fact Athelstan himself, his sex lengthening and stiffening like– well, you don't know what like, you're too distracted by it itself– and you want to reach out, you want to–

"iOh/i," he moans, gyrating beneath you, his hardness pulsating at the touch of your hand. The thought that you have the power to do that to him (more power than you've ever had in your whole life) makes you want to do it again and again; you curl your fingers around it and slide them back and forth, up and down, just like the tide (the tide that you now control, like the moon).

He doesn't look at you. He cannot. His eyes are closed and his head is tilted back, cradled by the sand. His mouth hangs agape, his hands like claws burrowed into the beach. As you continue the motions of your hand, he arches forward and startles you by gripping your arms tighter than any axe or sword or shield.

You sense that he requires something more (and you want to give it to him, you want to give him anything, everything, especially when he is looking at you like that– with such desire), so you hover over his pelvis and offer a quick prayer to Freyja before sinking onto him, like a sheath onto a sword.

It hurts. It hurts a lot. It feels both like it should be there and that it ishouldn't/i– and in this paradox you find a mixture of release and pain, indistinguishable from one another. It hurts so much that you can't move like you think you ought to; you're frozen in place as he is lodged inside you, you are tense against him; static, breathless.

"Gyda," Athelstan says, and it's all he can do to push through his lust and eagerness to say it. "Oh, God, Gyda, I've hurt you," he mumbles, unable to catch his breath, dreadfully penitent but also so amorous that he cannot hope to stop himself now.

"Let me lie down," you say, pinching the inside of your cheek with your teeth to stop from wriggling off him too quickly (you don't want him to think he is doing anything wrong; no, he isn't doing anything wrong, he's– perfect– it's just that you're untouched, and Freyja isn't listening to you anymore– perhaps because she knows your secret, the secret that tells of Athelstan's servitude to your family and the impropriety of this encounter– but you don't care, Valhalla be damned, you will have him, and he will have you). When you're hollow again, you roll onto the sand and wait for him, eyes still hungry in spite of your fear. But Athelstan hesitates. You think he's going to leave you here, a song unfinished, a damsel left distressed, but he is only reaching for his shirt; he lays it down, smoothes it out, and beckons you to it.

It's softer than the sand. It's just like him to offer it; the kind and gentle priest who never thought for himself but for everyone else (your kind and gentle priest). Once you're settled he parts your legs with his knees and lowers himself to your navel, where he plants a kiss that blooms into a shiver along your spine. Your sex is tender and throbbing, both with want and with ache (it still smarts handsomely from him, though you're trying to ignore it).

"Tell me if it hurts," he whispers into your ear, and you melt (in this moment you don't care if it hurts or not, you just iwant/i it, want ihim/i).

"Do it now," you instruct him, flexing upward into his chest (weak with lust) with as much encouragement as you can manage.

He bites down hard on his lower lip and pushes himself into you, his thick sex constricted by the tight walls of your innermost core. You cry out, startled and euphoric, wrapping your legs around his torso as he rolls forward, in and out of you, and gasps into your ear. He buries himself deeper and deeper inside you, farther than you thought you went, and you can do nothing but whimper and coil yourself around him as closely as you can manage. The spaces between his thrusts shorten, and soon you are both groaning loudly amidst your desperate, frantic gasps; you're moving so quickly you feel as though you could take flight (you've never seen this much sweat on Athelstan's brow, this much determination in his face). His eyelids steal him from you and he lets out a low moan broken by ragged breaths; he is trying to say something but his mouth can't form words, he can only leave it open and pray that he remembers to breathe.

His moans are soon joined by yours; a high, chimed, primal string of unintelligible notes, a medley of such beauty that exists only in the language of lovers.

And then the sun explodes behind your eyelids and you scream in the aftershock, you scream and you hear Athelstan shout too; different from you, darker, fuller, and it's the best sound you've ever heard him make (apart from the way he says your name).

The pressure that had been steadily building in your abdomen swells and then billows out of you (like a sail unfurling), and you claw at his back, and he digs his teeth into your neck, and your screams soon turn to whimpers, and those whimpers ripple across his flesh like goosebumps– and then you feel him shudder, and release, and empty into you, and then it is over (it is over and you are dizzied and your body drinks him into you and he is parched and you feed him with your kisses and it is over; over as soon as it began).

It's silent for a while. He slides off you and falls breathlessly to your side, where he seeks your hand with his (a wordless affirmation that he loves you; you squeeze back to say you love him too, even though that's not enough, even though you want to hear it with more than just the voice of his hands).

"What do we do now?" he asks, once he can think again.

You don't know what to say (or what to think, or what to do). "We appeal to the gods for mercy," you say, finally, staring at the cloudless sky miles above your head (and in them you swear you can see the faces of Freyja, and Frigg, and Odin, looking down on you with shame), "and we beg for their forgiveness."

"And if they don't give it?"

You swallow hard, debate the matter with your teeth on your lower lip, and yield completely to the inevitable.

"Then we run," you say, and it is cold and hard and final, like the futures you and your priest have just woven, irrevocably, into the fabric of fate–

(like the cloth adorning the gods; perfect and timeless and absolute and yet not for anyone, not even the favored, the blessed, the messiahs, to touch).


End file.
